In the past month I have grown accustomed to sending my American family regular updates from the home front here in Israel. Photographs of the tents erected on the grass between apartment buildings to serve as makeshift shiva homes large enough to accomodate the droves of people who arrive to console the grieving. Images of the rivers of people streaming into Mount Herzl for the military funeral of a lone soldier with no immediate family in Israel. The ubiquitous posters tacked to every lamppost and billboard featuring the missing men, women and children kidnapped in Gaza. A banner with images of missing babies, with the chilling question, “Where will your children sleep tonight?” A photograph of the giant box of tomatoes and cucumbers we ordered from the Gaza envelope, picked by volunteers and driven by truck to Jerusalem, since there is no one left to pick and purchase the produce more locally. And an image my husband saw on the news of a smiling soldier on the Lebanese border who strikingly resembles, and may very well be, my son’s homeroom teacher.

            But yesterday, instead of me updating my family in America, my family sent updates to me. All of my siblings and my husband’s siblings—as well as our parents, and other family members and friends—had made the long trip to Washington, DC for the rally in support of Israel on the National Mall. Over the course of the day, they sent countless photos and videos: Images of children draped in Israeli flags, holding hands and singing Hatikvah. Images of the Metro platform lined with hordes dressed in blue and white, en route to the rally. Signs that read “Christians stand with Israel,” “Nebraskans stand with Israel,” and “Am Yisrael Chai.” Videos of schoolchildren davening Hallel on buses, crying out to God from the straits of these horrible times but also affirming that “This is the day that God has made.” As I watched the videos of the speeches from the rally and scrolled through snapshots of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who traveled by plane, bus, and car to show their support for Israel, I was reminded of a line from the Talmud I taught yesterday: “The Holy One, Blessed Be He, performed a charitable deed toward Israel in that he scattered them among the nations” (Pesachim 57b).

            This statement appears in the context of a sugya about the Paschal offerings, which must be eaten in groups on the eve of Passover. Each group consists of one or more family units. The Mishnah raises the question of a newly-married bride who has recently moved from her father’s home to her husband’s home. Who slaughters the Paschal offering for her? Does she eat with her father or her new husband? This Mishnah generates an extended Talmudic reflection on the meaning of home, particularly for those individuals who feel the gravitational pull of more than one home, or who are not living in the place they consider their homeland. For a people who has spent so much of our history in exile, how do we relate to Jewish dispersal?

            We Jews have never lived only in one place. God’s original call to Abraham was to leave his homeland and travel to another place that God would show him. The rabbis in the midrash (Song of Songs Rabbah 1:3) compare Abraham to a vial of perfume that is shaken so that its scent may waft far and wide. So too did God tell Abraham to move about the world so as to spread God’s great name. The Talmudic rabbis add that one advantage of a global Jewish presence is that Jews, wherever they live, will attract converts to the faith, just like a person sows seeds far and wide so as to reap abundantly (Pesachim 87b). It is far easier to be a light unto the nations when those nations can observe us from up close and conclude, “Surely that great nation is a wise and discerning people” (Deuteronomy 4:5).

            Perhaps not surprisingly, the rabbis of the Babylonian Talmud—themselves living at a remove from their homeland—have much to say in praise of diaspora. They point out that God does not just value land and the Holy Temple, but also Torah and the Jewish people, which are counted among God’s most precious acquisitions. In fact, the rabbis consider that Babylonia may be more conducive to Torah study than the land of Israel, because food is more plentiful – when the sage Ulla arrives in Babylonia from the land of Israel and sees how plentiful dates are, he cannot understand why the Babylonians don’t just eat dates and study Torah all day long. (That night, when he gets diarrhea, he reconsiders – perhaps abundance is not all it’s cracked up to be.) Rabbi Hiyya argues that the Jews were exiled to Babylonia as a sign of God’s compassion, because God knew that the Jews would not be able to withstand the harsh decrees of the Romans in the land of Israel. Life in the land of Israel is hard, says Rabbi Hiyya. Diaspora can be a saving grace.

            But for the rabbis living in Talmudic times, as in our own day, the question of Israel vs. diaspora was not Either-Or. Rather, there were Jews living both in Israel and throughout the world, with the majority of Jews concentrated in two major centers, such that the global Jewish population might be conceptualized as an ellipse with two foci. The Talmudic rabbis understood the value of this demographic. They recount a conversation in which a certain heretic sneers at a rabbi, telling him, “You Jews are so lucky that we haven’t wiped you out yet.” The Jew responds, “We’re not lucky. You can’t wipe us out even if you want to, because we’re not all in one place. And even if you were to exterminate all the Jews in your kingdom alone, what good would it do you? The other nations of the world would regard you as murderous.” The heretic admits that this is their dilemma – as a result of Jewish dispersal, they have no easy way to wipe us all out.

            Other rabbis assert that exile may not have inherent value, but it is a necessary step on the journey to redemption. After all, how can the prophecy of the ingathering of the exiles be fulfilled if everyone is already ingathered? Rabbi Alexandri—his name alone attests to his cosmopolitanism—asserts that “There are three that return to their place: The Jewish people, the money of Egypt, and the letters on the tablets of the Ten Commandments.” The Jews will be restored to their land. King Shisak of Egypt will take back the money “borrowed” by the Israelites during the Exodus when he attacks Israel in the days of Rehoboam (see I Kings chapter 25). And when the Ten Commandments are shattered, the letters rise up to the heavens, back to their divine origin. Notably it is not clear that all of these acts of return are inherently positive – certainly not the return of the Egyptian riches, and perhaps not even the return of the letters, which was a consequence of the people’s sin and Moses’ anger. Is the return of all the Jewish people to the land of Israel truly something we ought to aspire to? What do we mean, in our daily prayers, when we ask God to “gather us together from the four corners of the earth”?

Yesterday, while watching Jews flock in droves to the National Mall, it seemed like an ingathering of exiles of sorts, in spite of the diasporic setting. Like the Mishnah’s bride, who is unsure whether she ought to be included in her father’s or her husband’s home on Passover, I am fortunate to be rooted in two homes – the diasporic homeland that is my birthplace and my parents’ home, and the land of Israel where I have made my home. No doubt that each of these homes is enriched and fortified by the other, with all of us united in our prayers – for the safe return of the hostages and soldiers, for the ingathering of the exiles, and for the redemption of the people of Israel, wherever they might make their home.